Enjoyable second episode, again storyboarded by Hatakeyama. We had a little time skip and now it looks like we're setting up for a classic detective type series. I'm curious to see how this story will play out, I'm personally hoping for a wacky twist, but at the very least from the tone of the series I expect it to be self-aware enough not to make this a 'it was the butler' kind of reveal.

As for the characters, the dynamic between Aya and Tsugaru is fantastic, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of Annie the reporter, I hope she'll play a major role.

I guess my enjoyment of the series will depend a lot on if it will lean towards the creative weirdness of episode one or towards the more 'tame' mystery aspects we're seeing in this second episode.

I really enjoy how the format they're going with. I guess some people will be pretty surprised by the combination of a timeskip and pivoting to a pseudo-episodic detective story form, but it looks to me like that was always the intent here. The serial detective format is the story - episode 1 was just a prologue. I find a lot of detective stories can weigh themselves down with too much flashback and history of the detective characters stuck in the middle of cases, so I'm all for spending a whole episode getting the backstory out of the way so that the rest of the show can mainly focus on the cases.

My screenshot are on mastodon as usually.

Some theses:

• we have another a 14-year-old girl which is (sic!) a journalist;
• another a cute maid;
• a blond loli in red dress, don't scare her;
• some very laconic anwers from Aya; Tsugaru sometimes laugh after them;
• many banters between Tsugaru and Aya;
• a dead blonde mother with smile;
• German France.
• a full-size opening song;
• at the end, a man with a hand-crossbow.

I waited this anime as semi-adventure and compared with animes such as Dororo or Mugen no Jūnin. Well, they travelled in several countries indeed, but it hadn't been shown. It turned almost into 100 % detective. Now I'm comparing a little with Kyokou Suiri where:

• one body is immortal,
• one [here is two] can fight, one cann't,
• banters included, but without Iwanagi's super horny-mode,
• detective + supernatural.

I'm as Shitlock:

• the killer is father who want to make stronger influence among humans, therefore use detectives just as intruments,
• his youngest son doesn't agree with father's politic,
• a forest-ass didn't kill the mother, but he come after this here, reason: news + just want to kill some vampires [the loli is in danger! or not?].

I ended here.

• Sherlock Holmes was mentioned here as a real person. I remember that at the first episode there was a person this the ring with M-letter, so… I guess he's Moriarty then.

• More kawaii or kowai, depend on your taste, loli. Still, don't scary her!

• As I guessed, the man with a hand-crossbow didn't kill the mummy. Btw, he's German and couldn't kill the daddy. But his words in this episode bring another person who could kill the mummy. But as we know, even in this case, he wouldn't be alone here, because he need some help from inside anyway. This scene was also good [at least for me] for showing actions and wording, especially the daddy's.

• The case isn't closed. I'm not against it, because I like the anime which has, if we believe to AniDB or MAL, only 13 episodes… which's not so much for me. Will the anime cover all the novel? Or, do we get some checkpoint and will wait the rest in new season(s)?

• The episode was focused on gathering info. For the start, we know by Aya's eyes that any vampir in this house has hands without scratch.

• Only the butler and the older son were without alibi. The latter even made a threat to our lovely pair, because he doesn't like when they sus also family.

• The cute house's maid was apart from loli in one-two minute, because of bathroom. Also, we know that she's kinda novice, but at this time she already can blow blood.

• The younger son, which I suspected in the previous episode, has partly alibi: we don't know so much what he did before walking with the father. I still sus him, because he was nervous in this time too. I remind that he was also the one with the father and butler who know where the silver were.

• What about the loli, she wanted to sing with the older son which refused therefore the maid came to help.

There're many theories from different minds, where even the loli which tagged with the maid could be a killer, yeah. But still stay with the youngest son, where he's motives don't changed here. But I can dig a tree heere: the older is a killer, the younger and maid know and may even help him, because they afraid him or support his idea in some way. In this case, the young doesn't support father idea because the older said so.

The night is full of darkness, but it's your turn to share your thoughts: who is bad one(s) here?

Influence of Japanese culture [mostly rakugo] on the anime.

I didn't read both but I saw manga is very shōjo. Here's an example from one discord server. Yeah, you can get some shōjo vibes from anime openning because of bisēnens, but this is too much.

• In this episode the case was finally closed.

  Looks like I predicted who's killer from the story start. I'm a detective! I kinda know that blody's going into the forest is false alibi, and he can regenerate. But I didn't understand the bottle moment which was… kinda easy, heh, because all important information was already given.

• I waited this moment when the a toy house was shown before.

• The maid is too cute for this family case.

• The loli is innocent. SHe's cute too, but in this moment I guessed that she could break the fingers. Scary, scary.

• The fight had some problem with animation. Well, it's kinda understandable, this's not Mappa level money.

• At the end we get some new persons, siblinging between the oni and our maid, and a gag with the father's name.

I think I was enjoying this in the beginning a lot more. When it was Holmes inspired vs having him literally be a character.

As for this episode specifically, our main team is shown to be grossly incompetent. I'm assuming in the next episode, we'll maybe see this as a ruse or not as it all appeared to be? That's my hope at least, as I can't say I like the idea of them actually being this chaotic.

All in all, I'm really liking the ideas behind this setting so far, but feel like the execution has felt a bit lacking. Also, rushed as a whole, as I didn't expect M(oriarty) to be an active character in the plot so early. I'm curious if these gripes would be addressed checking out the source material. Any readers of the manga out there?